Mothers with children under the guardianship of the DGAIA ask for help: "It's a juvenile prison."
The group demands speedy review of files to recover minors and criticizes the "opaqueness" of the reports used to separate families.
BarcelonaAmid the restructuring process of the new Directorate General for the Prevention and Protection of Children and Adolescents (DGPPIA), the families—around fifty, mostly single-parent families—of minors under the radar of the Department of Social Rights are demanding to be heard. Members of the Assembly of Broken Families for the DGAIA, a group that claims to have suffered institutional abuse and arbitrary separations from their children, asked this Friday the Ombudsman's deputy for children to intercede on their behalf to meet with the regional ministry. Government sources confirm they have not received a formal request for a meeting from the group, but they open the door to "any contribution" that seeks to improve the system.
In a press conference, the spokesperson for these families, Norma Falconi, explained that they are demanding that the new DGAIA review the files of minors placed in administrative guardianship centers "more quickly," since, they claim, the documentation is often delayed until the children return to their homes.
The platform also calls for support in demanding greater transparency from the executive branch in the preparation of the technical reports—psychological and social—that support many custody withdrawals. "There's a lack of objectivity. There are reports that talk about mothers without any professional having ever seen them. This creates absolute defenselessness," Falconi complains.
The assembly asserts that the current system functions as a "juvenile prison," in which the rights of children and their mothers are not respected. Restrictions on visits, the emotional disconnection between parents and children, and the bureaucratization of processes are, they denounce, "a serious obstacle" to the restoration of family ties.
In fact, only 15% of children in care return to their families, according to data acknowledged by the Children's Ombudsman, although 50% of cases could be reviewed. "This system serves neither Catalonia, nor the State, nor mothers. We must rethink it from the bottom up and with families within it," Falconi concluded.